Marco Rubio to Jobless: Get Out Of Town

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida). Lara Cerri/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMAPress

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Among the more intriguing proposals in Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida)’s War on Poverty anniversary speech Wednesday was giving jobless people subsidies to move to low-unemployment areas. Sounds like a common-sense fix? Maybe—but Mike Konczal, a expert in unemployment and inequality at the Roosevelt Institute, says it would just move the problem around.

Here’s why. Even though some states and localities have sunnier employment rates than others, Konczal tells Mother Jones, that doesn’t mean there are more jobs available in those places. “States with low unemployment are often small states that are heavily agricultural,” he says. “There is not a lot of dynamic turnover… There are already unemployed people there who want those jobs” that are open. Konczal had a deeper analysis of this type of proposal on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog last August, noting that such relocation vouchers would also likely go to”people who are at the back of the job queue—long-term unemployed with low savings. These are populations that will have trouble finding work, and so it is likely that they’d just move to be at the end of the queue of another state.”

Kevin Drum has more on Rubio’s other proposals, including a government wage subsidy.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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